Iris Chang's mysterious suicide in 2004, at age thirty-six, didn't seem to make any sense. She had more to live for than anyone, including fame, fortune, beauty, a husband, and child. Some even wondered if the controversial author of the Rape of Nanking had been murdered. Long-time friend Paula Kamen was among those left wondering what had gone so wrong. Seeking to reconcile the suicide with the image of Chang's perfect life, Kamen searched her own memory and scoured Chang's letters, diaries, and archival material to fill in the gaps of Chang's personal transformation-from awkward teen to homecoming princess in college, from ex-shy person to world-class speaker and international human rights pioneer-and later decline into mental illness and paranoia. A literary investigation of an important writer's journey, Finding Iris is a tribute to a lost heroine, a portrait of the real and vulnerable woman who inspired so many around the world.

About the Author

Paula Kamen is the author of "All in My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache." Her commentaries have appeared in the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post," among other publications. She lives in Chicago.

Praise For Finding Iris Chang…

American Author’s Association website “A brilliant effort and one that grabs the reader's heart and mind…Intimate and reflective…A page turner…Holds you emotionally hostage long after you stop reading it…A powerful and serious book.”

Entertainment Weekly, 12/19/08 "[A] moving bio.”

Curve, August 2009“Throughout, Kamen is a brazenly subjective narrator. As kind as she is exacting, she speaks to all sides of a woman whose name came to signify activist journalism.”

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